Law & Regulation

Online retail behemoth Amazon actively lobbies European political institutions to help increase its profits. However, the company twice refused to testify on labor concerns in the last two years and denied official delegations access to warehouses. After Members of the European Parliament and NGOs complained, the company’s access to European Parliament buildings was revoked in February 2024. Read More

Climate activist Mike Smith, a Māori elder in Aotearoa (New Zealand), sued seven of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the country to publicly admit that they caused a public nuisance and dramatically scale back emissions to reach net zero by 2050. In February 2024, New Zealand’s Supreme Court ruled that his lawsuit should b Read More

After the Netherlands implemented a sweeping ban on the use of coal in electricity generation by 2030, energy giant RWE took the country to arbitration court to demand €1.4 billion in compensation for the impact on its massive new coal plant in Eemshaven. RWE decided to drop the litigation in October 2023 when it was dealt a series of legal defeats in Read More

Cobre Panamá, the largest open pit copper mine in Central America, is operated by Toronto-based First Quantum Minerals. After some 250,000 people in Panama took to the streets to protest against corruption and environmental damage at the mine, Panama’s supreme court declared that First Quantum’s contract to operate the mine unconstitutional, causing it to be shut down. Read More

Timber giant Samling is one of the biggest logging companies on the island of Borneo in Malaysia. After SAVE Rivers, a local NGO, posted articles critical of the company’s lack of consultation with local Indigenous communities, the company sued for defamation in 2021. After two years of local and international pressure, Samling finally withdrew the US$1.05 million lawsuit. Read More

In the 1980s, the UK government deregulated and privatized bus systems all over the country under a belief that greater competition would introduce greater efficiency. However the opposite happened - prices rose and service quality declined. Read More

Yasuni National Park in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador, one of the most biodiverse areas of the planet, is home to the Huaorani, Tagaeri and Taromenane Indigenous peoples. It has been exploited for oil by companies like Shell and Petroecuador for over 50 years. In September 2023, after 10 years of activism, the people of Ecuador voted to halt oil drilling forever. Read More

Ramalingam Murugan, a migrant worker from Tamil Nadu, India, was employed by ship repair company Rigel Marine Services in Singapore. In January 2021, he fell off a company lorry and fractured his leg. Read More

Moti Group, a business conglomerate based in Johannesburg, tried to stop amaBhungane, a South African investigative news website, from reporting on leaked documents about an allegedly corrupt mining deal in Zimbabwe. A court-issued gag order was overturned on appeal in July 2023. Read More

Próspera, a company based in the U.S. state of Delaware, has invoked an investor-state dispute settlement treaty to try to force the government of Honduras to pay US$11 billion for outlawing the company’s plan to operate a privately run city on the island of Roatán. Read More